‘It has an odd sound,’ replied Alma, struggling with rather tense nerves.  ‘Do you believe the story?’

’I can’t see why in the world such a man should invent it.  It seems he wanted to marry someone who preferred someone else; and since then he has ——­’

Sibyl rippled off again.

‘He has —­ what?’

’Been blighted, my dear!  Of course, people have different ways of showing blight.  Mr. Redgrave, it is rumoured, hides his head in a hermitage, somewhere in the north of Italy, by one of the lakes.  No doubt he lives on olives and macaroni, and broods over what might have been.  Did you ever hear of that hermitage?’

Alma’s colour heightened ever so little, and she kept her eyes on the questioner with involuntary fixedness.  The last shadow of doubt regarding Sibyl having disappeared (no woman with an uneasy conscience, she said to herself, could talk in this way), she had now to guard herself against the betrayal of suspicious sensibilities.  Sibyl, of course, meant nothing personal by these jesting allusions —­ how could she?  But it was with a hard voice that Alma declared her ignorance of Mr Redgrave’s habits, at home, or in retreat by Italian lakes.

‘It doesn’t concern us,’ agreed her friend.  ’He has chosen to put his money into Hugh’s business, and, from one point of view, that’s a virtuous action.  Hugh says he didn’t suggest anything of the kind, but I fancy the idea must have been led up to at some time or other.  The poor fellow has been horridly worried, and perhaps he let fall a word or two he doesn’t care to confess.  However it came about, I’m immensely glad, both for his sake and my own.  My mind is enormously relieved —­ and that’s how I come to be working at the Renaissance.’

Alma took the first opportunity of giving the conversation a turn.  It was not so easy as she had anticipated to make her announcement; for, to her own mind, Cyrus Redgrave and the great ambition were at every moment suggestive of each other, and Sibyl, in this peculiar mood, might throw out disturbing remarks or ask unwelcome questions.  Only one recent occurrence called for concealment.  Happily, Sibyl no longer met Mrs Strangeways (whose character had taken such a doubtful hue), and Redgrave himself could assuredly be trusted for discretion, whatever his real part in that perplexing scene at he bungalow.

‘I feel the same want as you do,’ said Alma, after a little transitional talk, ’of something to keep me busy.  Of course, it must be music; but music at home, and at other people’s homes, isn’t enough.  You know my old revolt against the bonds of the amateur.  I’m going to break out —­ or try to.  What would you give for my chances?’

‘My dear, I am no capitalist,’ replied her friend, with animation.  ’For such a bargain as that you must go among the great speculators.  Hugh’s experience seems to point to Mr. Redgrave.’

‘Sibyl, please be serious.’